The free markets are completely discredited. There is significant political space to build a broad consensus for a 21st-Century New Deal that would stop spending our tax dollars on war and Wall Street, and instead help struggling homeowners and build affordable housing; fund job creating projects for clean energy and rebuilding our infrastructure; and fund a universal health-care system that would help American families, while cutting the nation's long-term healthcare costs.
It's time to for a taxpayers revolt against this mind-boggling Wall St. bailout. It's time to build a broad coalition to demand a 21st Century New Deal. This is our best, last hope.
The Institue for Policy Studies has released a plan based around the following elements:
• A stimulus for Main Street: Aid to the real economy
• Make Wall Street speculators pay for the bailout: No more debt
• Shut down the casino: Rein in the unregulated financial sector
• Limits on CEO pay and prohibitions on profiteering from the bailout
By Chuck Collins and Dedrick Muhammad, AlterNet. Posted September 25, 2008.
Who says we need to borrow a trillion dollars to save Wall Street from its own excesses?
I’ve heard lots of phony stories. Much of the country’s political and economic leadership has been running around raising the prospect of the Great Depression and a breakdown in the banking system (I actually had taken the latter seriously). These stories are absolutely not true.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlined the problem clearly in his first fireside chat, a week after taking office. “We had a bad banking situation,” Roosevelt said. “Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in the handling of people’s funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans . . . It was the government’s job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible.”
The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They’re called “loans.”